Our website provides comprehensive information about the CPE requirements for tax agents. Visit tpb.gov.au/cpe.

Records of your CPE should be kept for 5 years from the end of your CPE period.

This training can count towards your CPE if learning this new system enabled you to provide effective and competent BAS services to your corporate employer. You can refer to a similar example (Example 3) included in the CPE activities webpage.

Yes, webinars or training provided by accounting software companies can count towards your CPE where they are relevant to the tax agent or BAS services you provide, or knowledge of the software helps you to provide services to your clients competently.

Yes, listening to these podcasts will generally count towards your CPE.

Generally, time spent in listening to podcasts can be counted towards your CPE, provided:

• the topics are relevant to the tax agent or BAS services you provide (directly or indirectly) and help develop, maintain or enhance your knowledge and skills

• the sessions are delivered by organisations or persons with suitable qualifications and/or practical experience in the relevant topics.

The 10% cap applies to educative mental health and wellbeing activities. Examples of these activities include attending webinars about how to manage stress and self-care.

You will only be able to count the hours undertaken in completing this Diploma that are relevant to your provision of tax agent or BAS services. It is unlikely that all of the work undertaken to complete the Diploma will be relevant to the tax agent or BAS services that you provide.  

CPE relating to SMSF laws and regulations can count towards your CPE for TPB purposes, if this is relevant to the tax agent services you provide.

If there’s no condition attached to your tax agent registration, the minimum number of CPE hours is 120 hours for a 3-year CPE period.

If you have a tax (financial) advice services condition attached to the registration, the minimum number of CPE hours is 60 hours over a 3-year CPE period.

There are no additional hours of CPE you would need to complete for providing SMSF services for the purposes of the TPB.

CPE activities such as research or attending webinars to prepare material for lectures you deliver may count towards your CPE, providing the activities are relevant to the services you provide. However, you cannot count the time spent in teaching or delivering lectures for our CPE purposes.

We have allowed flexibility in our policy by spreading the CPE hours you need to complete over a 3-year period. Generally being on parental leave or working part-time does not exempt you from completing the minimum level of CPE over your CPE period.

However, if there are some extenuating circumstances, you can request some relief from the minimum level of CPE. Even under these circumstances you must show that you have attempted to use the flexibility of the CPE period to complete the minimum CPE hours required. 

For further information refer to the ‘Extenuating circumstances’ section of our CPE policy.

No, you do not need to log your CPE details via My Profile. You need to provide your CPE log or details when we request you to do so. This may happen anytime during your registration period, including at the time you renew your registration.

For tax and BAS agents renewing their registration after 1 July 2022, the new CPE policy will apply only from the date of renewal of registration.

In your situation, you will need to have completed 45 hours of CPE (that were required under our previous CPE policy) when you lodge your renewal application in 2024.

Assuming your renewal is approved, you will come under the new CPE requirements from 1 July 2024 and therefore you would be expected to complete 90 hours of CPE over a 3-year period from July 2024.

Yes, you must still ensure that you are undertaking our minimum POI requirements. If there are alternative POI checks you can undertake, you must ensure that these are equal to or more rigorous than our requirements.

No we do not require or recommend that you retain copies or originals of any identification documents you use as evidence to establishing your client’s identity. However, we ask that you make a record as soon as you complete identity checks on your clients with such information as:

• the date and time the POI checks were undertaken

• the name and title of the person who undertook the POI checks on your behalf (if you did not perform these checks personally)

• the type of documents that were sighted, and if they were original or certified copies

• how you sighted the documents (in person or electronically).

See our POI guidance for further information.

Yes, we do not recommend you keep your client’s director IDs.

We do not recommend receiving sensitive personal information of clients or their identity documents by email as it is not considered a secure method of transmission. There are several other options such as using a secure website, secure messaging or secure online mailbox. You may also consider undertaking POI checks through the use of videoconferencing or referring to the ATO’s guidance in this regard.

Refer to ‘Receiving identity documents electronically’ and ‘Remote verification’ sections of our POI guidance for further information.

See ‘Transferring a tax practice or client list’ section of our POI guidance to find out what you need to do if you are taking over a client or tax practice from another tax practitioner.

Refer to the ‘Well-established clients’ section of our POI guidance to understand our requirements in these situations.

Consultation around annual registrations is currently being handled by the Treasury and the government. A draft bill Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2022: Tax Practitioners Board Review was recently released for consultation and the submissions closed on 11 December 2022.

The Treasury and the government are currently considering all the submissions received.

Until all the submissions are considered and a final position taken, we wouldn’t know exactly when the annual registrations will start for tax practitioners.

We will keep you updated of any developments in this space through our usual communication channels.

If you registered as a tax agent (including to provide only tax (financial) advice services) or BAS agent under the option that required you to be a voting member of a recognised professional association, you will need to maintain the voting membership to remain registered. These are regulation items:

• 102 – for a BAS agent registration

• 206 – for a tax agent registration

• 210 – for a tax agent registration to provide only tax (financial) advice services.

For a summary of all the registration options available for tax agents and BAS agents, refer to:

• Qualifications and experience for tax agents

• Qualifications and experience to provide tax (financial) advice services

• Qualifications and experience for BAS agents

If you want to provide tax agent or BAS services through a company, you must register the company with us as a tax or BAS agent. The company will also need a sufficient number of registered individuals, being registered tax or BAS agents, to provide tax agent or BAS services on behalf of the company and for supervision purposes.

For further information refer to Tax agent registration and BAS agent registration.

No, you will need to renew each registration separately. You will need to lodge a company renewal and an individual renewal application 30 days prior to the renewal expiry date of each registration. You will also need to pay an application fee for both applications. You can check your registration expiry date on the TPB register.

You will need to register the partnership with us and to find out the eligibility requirements for a partnership registration, refer to:

• Tax agent registration

• BAS agent registration

Your partner does not need to be a registered tax practitioner. However, you must ensure the partnership has a sufficient number of registered individual tax or BAS agents to:

• provide tax agent or BAS services to a competent standard, and

• carry out supervisory arrangements on behalf of the partnership.

For further information, refer to:

• Supervision and control for tax agents

• Supervision and control for BAS agents.

If you have an approved deferral for the lodgement of your tax return, it is considered as complying with your tax obligations, and as such you would not need to disclose this.

The minimum number must be at least one and you must assess the number of registered individual tax agents your practice needs to ensure tax agent services are provided competently and there are adequate supervisory arrangements in place. For further information refer to Supervision and control for tax agents.

No, you do not need to renew your BAS agent registration if you are a registered tax agent. Registered tax agents can legally provide BAS services under their tax agent registration.

You must disclose any outstanding personal tax obligations to the TPB. You are generally not expected to disclose other debts (including HECS) unless there’s a fitness and propriety issue associated with those debts.

We’ve provided some suggestions on our website on the steps you may take to protect your practice from cyber-attacks and provide regular tips in our TPB eNews.

The ATO has also released some useful cyber security tips – see:

• Security tips for business (PDF, 149KB)

• Security tips for individuals (PDF, 141KB)

The Australian Cyber Security Centre’s (ACSC) advice is that all organisations should seriously consider following the ACSC’s Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents as a baseline, known as the Essential Eight, to make it much harder for adversaries to compromise systems. Their mitigation strategies can be found at Essential Eight at cyber.gov.au

Sometimes it can be safer to use cloud-based services because they employ professional cyber security approaches and it can be difficult to approach security as rigorously yourself. However, it is important for you to consider a range of factors when entering into cloud arrangements. See our practice note which provides some helpful information.

We are continually looking at ways to enhance and modernise our technology to make things easier for tax practitioners and the public when interacting with us online. As part of this modernisation, we recently redeveloped our online portal for tax practitioners – My Profile. We also recently refreshed our website, tpb.gov.au

We are currently making plans to integrate our new MyProfile system with myGovID, to reduce red tape and remove the need for tax practitioners to prove who they are when they apply to register with us.

Another project that we are likely to work on in future is integrating our system with director IDs, again aiming to reduce red tape for tax practitioners.

The onus is on the tax practitioner to exercise appropriate due diligence when outsourcing work and sending information offshore, including ensuring appropriate disclosure.

If a data breach occurs at the end of the offshore entity and we find that you had not taken due processes to ensure security of client information, we may determine that you have breached your Code obligations.

To learn about your Code obligations when entering into outsourcing or offshoring arrangements, refer to our practice note.

TFN information can include any personal information of client that can lead to identifying or connecting a client with their TFN.

Tax returns and business activity statements include sensitive information relating to your clients and their business activities. So, we recommend that these documents are not sent via emails even if you do not include their TFNs in them.

Refer to our guidance for further information.